1020724 - Links from external programs always open in non-private browsing window

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 856839

(Firefox :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[mozilla]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:30.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/30.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20140529161749

Steps to reproduce:

1.  Open Firefox normally.
2. Open a private browsing window (⇧⌘P) and navigate to any webpage. (Dealer's choice)
3. Command tab / Alt tab over to Thunderbird to read your mail.
4. Click a link in an email in Thunderbird.



Actual results:

The link opens as a new tab in the non-private window,.


Expected results:

Ideally links clicked in external windows would open in the last active Firefox window.

Alternatively, the user should be able to alter this behavior in their preferences (not about config) if the default behavior does not match their mental model.

This behavior can be harmful. 

For example, the other day I was creating a new Google account, separate from my main account, so I could play around with their two-factor setup process.

I did this in private browsing mode, but forgot to right click and select "Open in private window" in Thunderbird while reading the confirmation email they sent me. Now my test email is forever associated with my main Google profile, and the process had to be started over. One can easily imagine other scenarios where private information could leak due to this behavior.